Nice scam

 This arrived in my mailbox.


Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2020 07:53:44
From: G.O.V. UK <newsletter@amazonaws.com>
To: xxx <xxx@xxx.com>
Subject: Your latest vehicle tax payment failed ID - 4609441314363
Our Reference: 7399096
Date: 16/01/2020

Dear xxx@xxx.com,

Your latest vehicle tax payment failed. It appears that some of the billing
details associated with you might have expired or were otherwise changed.

http://up.rev.ref.kxtc.hpxanh.com/.asd/.+++/?kxtc

Yours sincerely

Enforcement OfficerlxlyeAnPD
On behalf of the Secretary of State for Transport


At first glance, it looks plausible. But what is the "lxlyeAnPD"?


And why is this email apparently coming from amazonaws.com? And what is that web address? And G.O.V. UK would have looked better as "Vehicle Tax".

So I checked the header; the email came from masterhost.smart-soft.ru, which is Russia!
And the address of the web site is ... Vietnam.

So, it's some sort of scam, and I'm guessing that if I were to go to that web address, it would want my credit card details, so they can bill me for vehicle tax.

So, nice try, but no banana.

If only they had used a spoof address that was gov.co.uk (it's VERY easy to spoof the from address). And they should get rid of the "lxlyeAnPD". And use a more plausible web site address, or an URL shortener so the site address isn't obvious.

Incompetence. Incompetence everywhere, even in the scammers.

VAT in the post-Brexit era

Apparently - no change.

I wrote to HMRC to ask them about how I pay VAT to EU countries after January 31st. They told me, same as before. The same arrangements continue (VAT MOSS) until the transition period expires (December 2020?). And after that - who knows?